Don't Test Me

Chapter 10

When I got home I took a beer out of the fridge and grabbed my pack of smokes. I lit one up and took a long drag, it felt so good, I held the smoke inside my lungs for a moment to enjoy the slow burn. When ii exhaled I took a sip of my beer and savored it. I examined the contents of my kitchen and decided on Kraft dinner for supper. I would just eat it right out of the pot with extra shredded cheese, fuck it.

As the water boiled I stared at my phone, it was blinking the little blue light at me, reminding me I had an unopened message. I dumped the macaroni into the boiling water and walked across my kitchen. If I opened the message it would mean I allowed her back in to my life, even if I didn't respond to it. I'd come so far from the girl I was; I was proud of myself. I had my own house, my own car (be it a piece of crap), a decent job, a savings account. Those things were all mine, no one gave them to me, no one provided for me. I did it all myself.

I stirred the pasta as it cooked and pulled the colander from the cupboard and placed it in the sink. I took the margarine from the fridge. I didn't put milk in my Kraft dinner, just the dehydrated cheese packet and margarine, I liked it a bit sharper. The blinking of my phone was taunting me like a bully, 'Check me, check me'.

When the noodles were done I drained them and mixed everything together in the pot. I placed a tea towel on my kitchen table and ate my supper right out of the pot with the spoon I used to make it. Being an adult sometimes meant you could do things like a kid without someone telling you it was inappropriate. I chuckled to myself as I sipped my beer. My Kraft dinner was a gourmet level white trash and anyone who might say otherwise could suck it.

There wasn't much on TV that night, so I watched the news. It held my attention for ten minutes before I changed the channel. I found a werewolf movie, Underworld on one of the channels which was full of commercial breaks but it held my attention because of Kate Beckinsale. She was seriously hot, I'd never been with a woman but I wasn't particularly against it, especially in tight leather like that.

I tucked the quilt from the back of my couch around myself and watched the edited for TV version of Underworld. All the good parts were cut out of course and the swearing. It was still good, nice and violent. My phone sat in front of me on the coffee table mocking me. I glared at it, but that did nothing. After the movie was over I turned off the TV and checked my message. I took a deep breath as I read it, 'Hey Margie, I'm out now. I'd like to see you if you want, I know it's been a long time.'

There it was, the message I knew would come someday. I wasn't sure when it would come but I knew it would show up eventually. At least she hadn't arrived at my door step this time. It was Lesley, my mother. Just like that, I was sucked back in time in my mind, to my past life where I was scared all the time.

Lesley had been released from the Dube Centre. It wasn't a detention facility, it was a mental health facility for people with serious mental health disorders and difficulties. Lesley had been in and out of that place for the majority of my childhood and adolescence. My dad had a lot of problems of his own, mostly with alcohol. I didn't remember him really, just bits and pieces of us on a swing set or in our back yard at our old house on the other side of town. I purposely avoided that block since I turned eighteen. My father, Jack, had eaten a bullet when I was five out in his truck parked down some dirt road. No one had ever told me which one it was. My mother told me she was never the same after he died, but I couldn't remember he being any different from how she was.

Lesley wouldn't get dressed for days at a time. She would forget to bathe and brush her hair and teeth. She didn't work, which to be fair, a lot of mothers didn't but it wasn't because she didn't have to, it was because she couldn't' get out of bed most days out of a week. I would end up at school with dirty clothes and no lunch. Social services showed up more then once, but I wasn't taken away because she wasn't hitting me or hurting me physically. It was neglect, which was pretty bad but apparently not enough to send me anywhere else. By the time I was eight, I was taking care of myself completely.

We were on welfare, and in a small town like ours, everyone knew it. The kids at school treated me like shit, telling me their parents paid for my clothes so I should thank them. Sometimes kids would take my pudding cups because they said I didn't deserve them, because I was a welfare kid. I ended up getting into a few fights defending myself. More then once a letter was sent home but my mom didn't do anything above signing the paper, indicating she had read it and sent it back to school with me. After the other kids learned I would fight back, they stopped messing with me. From age ten on I was ignored mostly, which was fine with me.

I cooked for myself everyday, packed my own lunches and did the laundry and household chores. I left food for Lesley in the fridge, which she sometimes ate. I shopped for our groceries a couple of times a week after school so the food wouldn't be too heavy for me to carry home. When I turned fifteen I got a job at the Co-Op grocery store. I started driving my dad's old truck, getting new plates for it. My boss from the Co-Op taught me how to drive, her name was Norma, she was a nice woman. When I passed my driving test she was the first person I told. Unfortunately, she had a heart attack when I was in grade 11, while she was on her lunch break at her house. Norma's husband found her a couple hours after, she was long gone by then. I went to her funeral with the rest of the Co-Op teens who worked there. We all kind of became friends over the years, just because we all worked in the same place.

After I graduated from high school, I applied for the job in the hospital kitchen. I sold my dad's truck and bought my Kia, because it had less kilometers on it and was way better on gas. I never looked back. I worked for two years to save up a down payment on my house then I moved out, and left Lesley behind. After I left her, she pretty much fell apart, considering I had been taking care of her since I was eight years old. She became kind of a hoarder, her house was always filthy, I refused to go there. I arranged for her to have groceries delivered once a week from the Co-Op, which I paid for out of her welfare checks. She came over to my house once and a while unannounced, but I always drove her back home. Maybe it was cruel but I didn't want a relationship with her, nothing good had ever happened between her and I. I made sure all her bills were paid for her, otherwise her electricity, water and power would have been shut off. I never took a dime from her accounts for myself after I turned eighteen, I didn't want to rely on her for a single thing. I had learned a long time ago that I couldn't.

Lesley eventually had a total breakdown and tried to kill herself. The neighbors called the cops and they had her brought to the hospital. I was called in as the next of kin, because she was in no condition mentally to care for herself. I arranged for placement at the Dube Centre for her, where she was put on a regiment of medications. Lesley was finally getting the help she needed from professionals. I arranged for a cleaning service to come out and take her house apart to clean it. I had no intention to do it myself, I told them if it wasn't clothing, major furniture or an appliance to throw it out. It took the cleaners a week, and they were expensive but when it was done, you could actually call that house inhabitable.

I didn't visit Lesley while she was at the Dube Centre. I thought about it, but I didn't want to see her. I made sure all her bills were paid and the house was ready for her, if she decided to move back to town after she her treatment was done. Her psychiatrist updated me on how she was doing, her progression and her set backs. I was her next of kin after all. After a while, her psychiatrist stopped suggesting I visit and just updated me like a solider giving a status report. I heard less from them as her treatment improved.

I drank down the last of my beer and put the bottle in my recycling bin next to my front door. Now Lesley was out and she wanted to see me. I didn't have it in me to process what that meant that night. I didn't want to see her, even though she was my mother. A mother was supposed to be a caring, loving person who sacrificed everything for their child. I didn't have a mother, I felt like I had a surrogate whom I had rented space from then to be dumped on the floor of a filthy life and left to fend for myself. I used to wish she'd given me up for adoption, but I might have been worse off in the end. At least I had control in my life now, I could control who came in and out of my door and who I spoke with. I didn't need Lesley, I never really had. Maybe it was finally time to sever the connection completely. If she really was better, then she didn't need my help at all anymore. A part of me felt tentative relief from that thought.